Оливър Сакс, изследователят на мозъка...

 

And so, our family story reached an extremely dramatic moment, which I perceive and describe as the greatest miracle of my life. I hope you’ll agree with me. For some reason I still don’t understand, the Universe or God had decided to give me another chance. That’s my point of view in this complex dynamic, but today, so many years later, as I gradually begin to realise that my own feelings, understandings, and insights are only a small part of this incredibly intricate family system, I now see that they are entirely insufficient for grasping the whole. This story involves at least five participants – and it’s probably of utmost importance that I try, at the very least, to sketch, present, and explain the separate psychological and personal dynamics it comprises.
So let us look around and try to understand, as far as possible, what exactly is happening in this moment and in those that follow – the days, the months, the years…

The effect of the “children’s” words during the family constellation session was, of course, like a bomb going off. It’s hard to describe something like that if you haven’t experienced it – the feeling of absolute truth, as if delivered “from above,” as though you were speaking directly with God, combined with immense surprise, awe, and speechlessness. All the participants – some ten to fifteen people – stood frozen, stunned, slapped in the face, pick whichever phrase seems most apt. I was sniffling audibly. Doreen, who had also begun to cry, was completely silent. Her face turned visibly grey; the blow must have been immensely heavy, but she took it without any signs of weakness or – heaven forbid – resistance. She sat calmly, a bit like one of those wax figures in Madame Tussaud’s Museum, not making a sound, though only she knows what it must have cost her.

The sense of mystery, of magic, of touching something immensely powerful – however incomprehensible – held us all for at least a minute. We quickly performed the ritual associated with every such therapeutic session – mutual forgiveness, farewell, a hug. And then we began to disperse. Life usually returns to its regular course, even when we would rather sink into the oblivion of the moment and never, ever, ever surface again.

A brief summary of the facts – far less important than understanding the internal, psychic dynamics, yet still essential for grasping the direction of the story to come. So, what happened next?

As strange as it may sound, the following few months are almost completely erased from both our memories. That is – we both roughly know what happened, but the details have vanished, as if they were scribbles on a classroom blackboard. I do remember very clearly, of course, how she lit up and somehow soared when she met Klaus – it was literally just days after the events I just described. They had met at some dance party – which may sound a bit like a feast in the midst of a plague – but it all makes perfect sense if one tries to imagine her situation. She had suddenly lost “everything” after months of being in a state of full control, or at least clarity, about what she expected to happen. Naturally, her first and most crucial task – including as a mother, as part of a family system with two children – was to take care of her mental health and stability. You all know that instruction from airplane safety procedures: “If oxygen masks drop from above, place yours on first, then assist your children.” What good is a parent who’s unconscious or in shock?

And here comes the moment, no doubt, to address one of the most important aspects of the situation – both Doreen’s personal one and the overall family situation. The usual reaction of people who hear all this is fairly blunt: “But what kind of woman, what kind of mother, so easily agrees to part with her children? That can’t be normal – this woman must have a problem, something’s definitely wrong with her!” And when the two of us try to share our joint sense, understanding, conviction that she made the only right decision – the one that kept the whole family system in balance – it’s usually met with difficulty and deep mistrust. The power of “socially accepted” behavioural models in such situations (the children stay with the mother, the father walks away) is immense, and thinking or especially feeling outside the box is no easy feat.

But the reality of the situation isn’t that hard to empathise with – as long as we describe all the “psychological specifics of the situation” with enough clarity and depth, without too much embellishment.

First: the past months had made it abundantly clear to all of us that life without the support of the family system would be completely impossible for me. I was at the end of everything, and Doreen is a woman sensitive enough and emotionally competent enough not to ignore something so vital. Without the unmistakable hint – or rather the command – delivered by the family constellation, she would hardly have done it, but after that everything was absolutely clear to her. Someone, from somewhere, was sending us all a clear signal: “This is the only right, the only possible decision. Don’t cave now – you’re almost on the far bank of the Danube!” And she did not allow herself for a single moment to doubt the importance or the rightness of that signal, that command. She’s a great woman, that Todorka!

Second: in the years that passed before the family dynamic changed again (Lea went to live with her mother at the end of 2009, and only little Pavel stayed with me – which is of massive importance, because without him Lea would never have reached the stage of growth and maturity she is in today!)… During those years, Doreen went through her own phase, inseparably connected with Klaus’s presence. She told me more than once that after the separation she was so burned out inside, so depleted, so exhausted and prone to emotional collapse that without that three-year pause she would never have been able to invest the truly immense energy that would later be required to carry Lea on her back through everything I will describe further – if I manage to, of course. This story is complicated – very complicated…

Third – put simply: we just felt – like proverbial camels scenting water in the desert – that this was the only right decision. We felt it, and that was that. When the Universe or God has spoken, you fall silent, lower your head, and accept. Everything else is just muleish nonsense. Not that we aren’t capable of that too…

That’s enough.

As for me, I was sinking little by little into the next phase of my personal development, which would turn out to be no less painful and difficult than the previous ones, though far less dramatic on the surface. In short: after a few days of total euphoria, rapture, and – oh yes, oh yeah, oh yeeeeeeees! – victory, Sieg, Victory… after all that, without even realising it, a dark, suffocating mass descended upon me (or surfaced from within), one in which I was destined to spend many, many more years. I decided that from that day on I would fiercely hate Todorka and never, never, ever – I mean never! – forgive her for “what she had done to me.” And so I lived with that hatred inside me, a bit like the frog in that pot that’s being slowly and imperceptibly heated from below. Poor thing!

And Klaus? He, of course, appeared at some point – a large, silent, heavy bear of a man, who always emanated a strange sense of almost shamanic power. A strange man – very strange and very powerful – but back then all I could see was the male who’d taken my mate, and all I could do was bare my teeth. What else? We shook hands silently; he said something like, “I’m sorry for what happened, but you have to accept it.” That, or something close. We shook hands, he helped her carry out the few things she was taking with her – and that was it.

The magic that shrouds all this lies in the simple fact that between the date of the family constellation (sometime in the autumn of 2005) and Doreen’s final move to a new apartment (April 2006), at least five or six months had passed in which we continued to live under the same roof – and yet, I repeat, neither of us can recall a single day. Five or six months, completely blocked from our memory! Yeah…

The children? That’s where things get a lot more complicated, especially when I start speaking again about Lea, the central figure in this whole story. But let’s take things in order – first comes little Pavel.

The boy visibly withdrew into himself, which can hardly come as a surprise to anyone. Only many years later, when he was finally able to speak about it, did he share with us the feelings of deep hurt, anger, and rebellion against his mother’s “decision” – the real reasons and psycho-social grounds for which he, of course, had not the slightest idea. “For a very long time, I couldn’t love Mum” – that, or something very close to it, is how he described it himself. My own role in the whole affair was completely unclear to him – that much is certain. Which in no way means our relationship became any closer or warmer. To me, he was still “just a child,” and to him I was probably a source of both security and order – and of daily frustration and irritation. The harshness I had always clung to in bringing up children (Bulgar, Bulgaaaar!) remained for a long time between us like a thick, water-, heat-, and everything-proof wall. That’s the way I was, and in many ways still am to this day. It’s not easy, dammit!

And Lea? Oh, help me, mother! Here I’ll have to dig very deep – I only hope I don’t get lost in the twists of the labyrinth.

So I wade into the deepest waters of psychological and psychiatric speculation available to me (I have no formal training in the field beyond years of reading philosophical texts, some of them steeped in psychology – but that’s all). Much of what I’ll be sharing and asserting from here on rests solely on what I hope are enlightened glimpses beyond the impenetrable wall that separates Lea’s inner world from that of everyone else. In trying to find some explanations for her thinking and behaviour, I’ll rely above all on the insights of Oliver Sacks – one of the leading figures in psychiatric and psychotherapeutic approaches at the end of the last century – on what Doreen has shared with me, and on anything I’ve ever managed to receive as “information” from Lea herself. It’s a bit like conversing with an oracle, as you can probably imagine – but that’s what I can offer.

Let’s start again with the facts. Up to this point, there had always been strong tension between Doreen and me about how to “raise Lea.” Put simply, I insisted on “more strictness,” while she favoured attempts at closeness and understanding, however impossible they always seemed. Over the years, this had turned into a kind of cold war in which each of us applied our own methods and beliefs, without paying much attention to the other. As I’ve already described, most of the difficulties with Lea were linked to her uncontrollable outbursts of “anger” and “rage.” Today – after Doreen’s years-long effort to enlighten me – I understand that this was the only communication Lea was capable of in her despair, confusion, and lostness in the mess into which her condition plunged her. But back then I was miles away from any such understanding. And I “raised” her.

The practical consequence of all this was that the child – who, through long and bitter experience, had learned that she could “turn to” only one of her two parents (the one who doesn’t explode and tug her ears just when she’s trying to tell them something important) – began to direct her outbursts of “rage” and “anger” mostly toward her mother, while with me she “behaved.” And I, the idiot, saw all this only as confirmation of my own “parenting methods.” See? She can behave if you don’t back down and keep showing her where her limits lie! How can you be so thick-headed as to insist that we should still “listen” to what she’s trying to scream at us! Idiocy, idiocy – sheer idiocy! Now get out of my hair and leave me in peace! I’ve got enough other problems!

So – now the child stayed with me. Her mother was no longer in the house. And the outbursts of “rage” and “anger” began to lessen more and more – meaning she expressed them mostly when she was with her mother on weekends. With me, she was “calm” – that is, more or less locked inside the hermetic boundaries of her own world, without any form of communication, no way to share anything from that world with anyone. And it remained like this for three full years, despite the warning signs that something wasn’t right – signs I’ll describe later. A nightmare. How we ever got out of that swamp, I still can’t grasp!

But what exactly is this hermetically sealed world – what does it consist of? And how can one peek inside it, how can one help their child?

Honestly, to me, Doreen’s abilities border on the magical – though perhaps that’s simply a reflection of my own limitations, of that Asperger-like uncommunicativeness I spoke of at the beginning. Maybe something like this is accessible to anyone with a less closed communication system – who knows? Listen, listen, and try to draw your own conclusions. The paths into the worlds of autistic people are always unique, but the unifying key to all successful communication with them is the same: you must open your senses as much as you possibly can, and listen, and listen, and keep listening until you begin to glimpse what lies behind the screams, the fury, the apparent madness of the behaviour. After that, it gets a little easier… Oooh – “easier,” is it?

In one of his classic studies on autism – The Twins – Oliver Sacks describes the unique case of twin brothers with severe cognitive impairments and profound autism who, despite (or perhaps because of) these conditions, are capable of astonishing mental feats, such as identifying the day of the week for any given date – thirty thousand years forward or backward. You tell them a date, and a minute or two later they tell you the day of the week, with absolute, unwavering precision. Their achievement is all the more baffling when you consider that the brothers are incapable of basic intellectual tasks like reading, writing, or simple arithmetic. How they perform their “calculations” is completely incomprehensible – but they do it, again and again, and as a result they briefly become “stars” of American television shows.

But the moment I want to draw your attention to – because it is especially important for understanding the world of autistic individuals, and particularly that of our Lea – is slightly different. Here is the specific passage from the study, so I don’t miss anything:

This second time they were seated in a corner together, with a mysterious, secret smile on their faces, a smile I had never seen before, enjoying the strange pleasure and peace they now seemed to have. I crept up quietly, so as not to disturb them. They seemed to be locked in a singular, purely numerical, converse. John would say a number – a six-figure number. Michael would catch the number, nod, smile and seem to savour it. Then he, in turn, would say another six-figure number, and now it was John who received, and appreciated it richly. They looked, at first, like two connoisseurs wine-tasting, sharing rare tastes, rare appreciations. I sat still, unseen by them, mesmerised, bewildered.

What were they doing? What on earth was going on? I could make nothing of it. It was perhaps a sort of game, but it had a gravity and an intensity, a sort of serene and meditative and almost holy intensity which I had never seen in any ordinary game before, and which I certainly had never seen before in the usually agitated and distracted twins. I contented myself with noting down the numbers they uttered – the numbers that manifestly gave them such delight, and which they ‘contemplated’, savoured, shared, in communion.

Had the numbers any meaning, I wondered on the way home, had they any ‘real’ or universal sense, or (if any at all) a merely whimsical or private sense, like the secret and silly ‘languages’ brothers and sisters sometimes work out for themselves? And, as I drove home, I thought of Luria’s twins – Liosha and Yura – brain-damaged, speech-damaged identical twins, and how they would play and prattle with each other, in a primitive, babble-like language of their own (Luria and Yudovich 1959). John and Michael were not even using words or half-words – simply throwing numbers at each other. Were these ‘Borgesian’ or ‘Funesian’ numbers, mere numeric vines, or pony manes, or constellations, private number-forms – a sort of number argot – known to the twins alone?

As soon as I got home I pulled out tables of powers, factors, logarithms and primes – mementos and relics of an odd, isolated period in my own childhood, when I too was something of a number brooder, a number ‘see-er’, and had a peculiar passion for numbers. I already had a hunch – and now I confirmed it. All the numbers, the six-figure numbers, which the twins had exchanged, were primes – i.e., numbers that could be evenly divided by no other whole number than itself or one. Had they somehow seen or possessed such a book as mine – or were they, in some unimaginable way, themselves ‘seeing’ primes, in somewhat the same way as they had ‘seen’ 111-ness, or triple 37-ness? Certainly they could not be calculating them – they could calculate nothing.

In this somewhat strange, hypnotic, and confusing passage lies, in my view, one of the deepest insights into the world inhabited by autistic individuals – a world that “neurotypical” people can approach only if they place their trust in equally mysterious forces and intuitions, such as maternal instinct (bolstered by immense patience and tireless effort toward understanding). Or perhaps I’m merely drifting off in some mystical, irrational direction – who knows? In any case, this scene, described with such skill and depth by Sacks, provides me with the basic premises and keys for understanding Lea’s world – to the extent that this is even possible.

But how do I actually imagine this world? Broadly speaking, its main component is chaos – that is, the complete incomprehensibility and unpredictability of everything the autistic person constantly encounters. But this chaos, this swarm of countless sounds, colours, impressions, smells, tactile and other sensory experiences, is speckled with flashes connected to the perception of a particular pattern – a Muster, as the Germans say – which they are capable of imprinting on their memory and cognitive system with an intensity we cannot even fathom. Most likely because these patterns are so irregularly and randomly distributed, so intimately tied to personal experiences and mindsets that are entirely unique to each autistic person, they acquire something I would dare to call “blinding brightness” – and it is precisely these cognitive flashes that they attempt to share with us, usually without any success, because they lack the necessary linguistic and logical apparatus.

An autistic person might endlessly repeat a series of completely unintelligible sounds or phrases – from basic onomatopoeia like mi, me, mu, through the key phrases used by Lea (decoded by her mother – more on these later, when we reach the relevant part of this story), all the way to the unfathomable mathematical feats described by Sacks. (Calculating six- or eight-digit prime numbers, as the twins in his story do, would have required – at the time – computing power equivalent to a machine occupying a small university auditorium.) In a way, this is like constantly sending out signals into the cosmos without receiving any reply most of the time. How, then, could one not fall into utter despair, rage, and fury? That, to me, is the autistic world – as I understand it. (Without insisting too much on originality here, since I’m sure all of this has long been known to specialists in the field.)